


The Deathless

by stellar_dust



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-21
Updated: 2008-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellar_dust/pseuds/stellar_dust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1895, and Jack meets someone who just might have the answers he's been seeking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deathless

The summer of 1895, Jack's main (in point of fact, only) competition on the unkillables circuit went by the imposing name of Koshey the Deathless.

Jack attended his first show, purely out of professional curiosity, and not at all on the chance there was someone else in the world like him, not at all. He left disappointed; the act turned out to be a lot of mirrors and flashy lights, and Jack found Koshey's dramatics, flailing and screaming as he pretended to die in agony, entirely too _gauche_ for his tastes. He told his manager later that night that they had absolutely nothing to worry about; then he offed himself half a dozen times with a Colt 45 (_much_ more effective to simply drop dead, let the audience squirm for a few minutes, wondering) and spent a very enjoyable night with the Wolf-Boy and the Tattooed Lady (if you held her thighs together _just so_, you could make Queen Victoria do something very naughty with a goat, and that just _never ever got old_).

The next evening, Koshey the Deathless accosted Jack outside the tent after his performance, ramrod straight with arms crossed and trying very obviously to look intimidating. Jack tried to brush past, but something in the man's eyes made him stay.

"Hey, nice beard," Jack said, mentally vowing never to grow one like it for as long as he lived, no matter how long that turned out to be.

"How do you do it?" Koshey asked. Jack couldn't help shivering as he raked him up and down with his gaze. "Every night, so many times, so easily .. 'The Man Who Couldn't Die.' How?"

"I .." Jack faltered, for a moment; there wasn't any harm in the truth, after all, Koshey couldn't exactly _kill_ him, but - he winked and put on his most dashing smile, answering, "A magician never reveals his secrets."

Koshey frowned. Apparently he didn't appreciate that answer. "You are many things, but no magician."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "No offence, but how would you know?" He really didn't want to get into yet another fight behind the show tent, but he'd do it if he had to.

With a small, humourless smile, Koshey waved him on, saying, "Perhaps, one day, all will be revealed."

Jack shook himself, and went home to his bunk, with just a single backward glance. Advanced hypnosis was a little out of place in nineteenth century Wales ..

After that, Jack spent a good deal of time trying to figure Koshey out. Every night, just as the show was starting, Jack would slip into Koshey's tent - sometimes standing in the back, behind the crowds, fading into the dark canvas walls; sometimes backstage, in the darkness, looking for the mirrors and assorted contraptions of a Victorian carney, never quite finding them but never seeing a thing out of place, either.

He didn't go unnoticed. As Koshey emerged from his manufactured glow, standing up to take his bows, each night his eyes sought out Jack, in them a sneer, a challenge - an invitation. Jack couldn't fathom the defiance that radiated from Koshey like a shield; all right, so they were competitors, but that was business, and with Koshey it seemed ... personal. And then that desperate invitation in his gaze, _please come take me_ \-- no, that wasn't right, it was almost -- _please come **save** me_.

And Jack didn't know what to make of it, but the thrill that shot up and down his spine, shivered around his legs and caressed the back of his neck when Koshey turned one day, just before the flames began, and noticed him backstage, with a narrowed gaze and a crooked little smile that said _stick around tonight and we'll finish this_, promising -- well, Jack knew that one day he'd stay to find out what.

He wasn't sure why he hadn't done so yet, to be honest. It was the sort of thing he'd do, if it seemed fun and interesting - and oh it _did_ seem fun and interesting - but there was something, _something_ about Koshey that made him want to step back, to learn more.

He hadn't gleaned much. He knew Koshey was a con man - not as good as Jack, but passable, a little too fond of his own game. And despite the name, he was obviously not Russian, the accent was all wrong - then again, Jack wasn't nearly as American as he sounded, so you never could tell. That was about it, really: a profession, a fake name, a rubbish little goatee, decent at hypnosis, and a tent and stage just like all the others on the circuit. And the eyes. Not much to base a first impression, much less a reason for his interest in Jack.

And yet, there was something - _familiar_ about the man, almost - it couldn't be. Could it? No way. The Doctor'd - well, first of all, the Doctor wouldn't ever be a sideshow freak, and secondly, if he were, he'd be _better_ at it. Not to mention the eyes were all wrong. That decided things, as far as Jack was concerned, but there was still ... _something_ ... about Koshey that made him wonder.

After nearly a week of skulking about and taking his thoughts in circles, Jack was poking around at dusk behind Koshey's tent, hoping to find some bit of rubbish at last that might answer his nagging questions, like who the hell _was_ Koshey, why couldn't he get him out of his head -- and _why_ did he remind Jack so much of the Doctor?

Suddenly, Jack's arm was grabbed from behind, and he found himself pulled up to his feet, eye to eye with the man himself.

"This game," Koshey hissed. "It has to end. I can't go on - not much longer. Tell me. How do you do it?"

"Quit then," Jack said, tugging at his arm. "Go back where you came from. There's no game. No one's making you stay."

Koshey's eyes blazed. "You would dare to tell me - " He pulled Jack around, shoved him up against a nearby tree, twisting Jack's arm behind his back and pushing forward until they were nearly nose to nose. Jack tensed, breathing hard. He hadn't expected the man to be quite so _strong_.

"You .. you .." Koshey panted into Jack's face, his eyes bored into Jack's and he seemed to get - more intense and less demanding at the same time, if that were possible. "What are .. what .. you .. oh, Rassss ...."

Koshey was so _close_, and so like the Doctor but somehow also so different - it was awesome and incredible and Jack couldn't help it, he bent forward and met Koshey's lips with his.

Koshey moaned, a sound that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, and he would have fallen if Jack's arms hadn't gone round him just in time. He recovered quickly, though, and pushed Jack back against the tree, harder this time, but Jack wasn't complaining, because Koshey's _kiss_, desperate and demanding and he remembered why he wasn't keen on beards, Koshey's fingers on his back, tapping out a rhythm, onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour - but his tongue was against Jack's and it _tasted like_ \- like the Doctor, like the TARDIS, like _home_, like the answer to all Jack's questions, like power, more power than he could hope to contain, ever - but more than any of that Koshey's kiss tasted like _death_, the moments between dying and living and Jack would have given anything, _anything_, for that kiss to go on forever just so he could stay there in that place and maybe - find out - why - _onetwothreefour_ -

Koshey pulled back abruptly and Jack fell boneless to the ground, groaning. _So_ close, so -

"You're not the Doctor," Koshey hissed at him, from what seemed like seven stories up. He sounded - pitiable, petulant. Nearly betrayed. But he couldn't _really_ \- okay, he knew the Doctor, that answered _something_, but didn't come near to explaining what he wanted with _Jack_.

"Neither are you," Jack answered back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; though some traitorous voice in his head muttered, _close enough_.

"Of course not," Koshey spat. His eyes were dark, darker than the night, darker than _space_. "I'm _better_. You - you're _nothing_. You're no one."

And he turned on his heel and left Jack there, alone in the dark at the base of an oak tree, with more questions than ever and desperately in need of a wank.

Ten minutes later, Jack should have been heading home to his bunk, or across to his own performance tent - but instead he found himself slipping again into the back row of Koshey's show, unobtrusive as ever. The Deathless was just ramping up to the coup de grace, he'd set himself on fire and was starting in on that melodramatic, histrionic screaming and flailing about. Jack shook his head - no more answers here, not tonight, he'd surely got enough to mull over already - and nearly ducked back out again, but suddenly it became obvious to Jack that something was going wrong.

There was smoke up on stage, the platform itself was burning, and Koshey's screams - they seemed less for show, more desperate and _scared_ than Jack had ever heard the man. The audience was laughing, clapping and whistling, but Jack was sure this was _not right_ \- for one thing, it should have been nearly over by then, and -

Just as Jack was about to take matters into his own hands and call for a bucket of water and an ambulance, a young, blond man in an off-white thigh-length coat charged in through the flap.

He paused, seemed to take the whole scene in with a glance, then grabbed Jack's arm and asked, intently, "Quick, how long has this been happening? How many times?"

"Um," Jack thought. "Ten, maybe? Something like that. Every night for a week, at least."

"Oh, _Rassilon's knickers_," he muttered darkly, and before Jack had a chance to ask he was running toward the platform, shouting. "Out of the way! Move!"

The audience had begun to buzz, standing and turning to one another in confusion, so as the man in white bounded up the wooden stairs and knelt beside Koshey, Jack stood up on the bench, put two fingers in his mouth and _whistled_.

Dead silence, all eyes on him; just the way Jack liked it. He grinned disarmingly and waved to the crowd.

"All right!" Jack yelled. "You heard the man! Everyone out! There's been an accident, let's give them some air .. that's it, come on .."

Jack heard mumblings as the people began to slowly trickle out the door. "Hey! If you want to watch someone die, I'm three stages over at quarter to nine! Free admission if you show your ticket for Koshey!" Jack didn't think Koshey'd be in a position to mind, somehow, and he'd deal with his manager one way or another.

He grinned as a cheer went up from the audience. That'd done it. They began to move a little faster, now, every other man shaking Jack's hand at the door.

As the last of the erstwhile audience left the tent, Jack tied the flap closed and turned to face the platform.

He'd had some thought of helping, maybe - call for a nurse, tie off a bandage, _something_ \- but up there on stage were two figures, enveloped together in the same coruscating glow from Koshey's act, that Jack had always assumed was a trick of mirrors, only ten times brighter than he'd ever seen it, almost blinding. It drew Jack forward, to the edge of the platform, even as he realised he was so far from needed as to be utterly irrelevant. He stood transfixed. How could he not have noticed, all the times he'd stood back there and watched, this energy, it felt - just like Koshey's kiss.

"No." It was Koshey's voice, from the figure still prone on the floor, black and charred beneath the glow. "No, _no_, _you're not supposed to be_, Doctor, no, _stop_, go _away_, stop it, leave me, no, _no_, I'm - _STOP IT_ -"

The litany was heartbreaking, and Jack nearly collapsed, remembering that _kiss_ \- had it only been half an hour ago? - he found himself almost wishing the Doctor _would_ stop, and -

\- wait, _Doctor?_ Jack's eyes widened. Well, _that_ could explain a few things. And if he hadn't recognised Jack at the door, that meant --

"Do shut up," the Doctor answered Koshey's pleas, firm and almost tender. "Just a bit more, Master, and then - ah ... there you are. Go to sleep, now."

The glow began to fade, then, slowly revealing the blond man - the Doctor - in striped trousers (magnificently fitted, Jack noticed) and trainers, down on one knee and peering into Koshey's eyes, his hands fixed on either side of his head.

Jack didn't want to look at what emerged from the halo at the Doctor's feet, a charred mass of blistered flesh with sightless, staring eyes, no longer the defiant gaze that had haunted Jack's steps - it wasn't Koshey the Deathless any more, it couldn't be - and it _breathed_.

Without looking up, the Doctor nodded in Jack's direction. "Do you have a cloak, or a blanket? He should be wrapped."

Jack cast about the tent and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a horse blanket from that morning's pony act, and passed it up.

"Thank you."

"Can I -" He didn't think he could bear not helping, not _knowing_.

"I've got it, thanks," the Doctor answered tersely. Jack watched, breathless, as he slowly, carefully wrapped Koshey's body, then lifted him in his arms. Jack would have expected a man of such bulk, such _presence_ to weigh more than that, but to the Doctor the charred husk seemed light as a feather.

"Now where - " the Doctor muttered. "Ah. Of course." And he disappeared with Koshey into the battered old cabinet at the back of the stage.

The Doctor reemerged seconds later, amid the familiar grinding pulse of a TARDIS on automatic, and the cabinet disappeared away into the ether.

Jack _ached_ to be on board. For several reasons, some of which didn't bear thinking about.

"That's done, then." The Doctor dropped with a heavy sigh onto the front row bench beside Jack. "I always wondered how he - but no matter."

"Where'd you send him?"

The Doctor leaned forward and clutched his forehead in his hands. "Gallifrey. Nowhere else, of course."

Gallifrey! Then he didn't know - _definitely_ not Jack's Doctor. He sighed. Of course he wouldn't be so lucky.

"Are _you_ all right - Doctor, is it?"

"Nearly so," the Doctor answered. "Just gave him a bit of my artron energy, a few more minutes and I'll be - although, I don't suppose you have a cup of tea?" He looked up at Jack, hopefully, nearly smiling, and _those_ haunted eyes belonged to the Doctor Jack knew.

Jack wondered just what Koshey had been to the Doctor, that he'd come charging in without hesitation and given up some of his own life to save the man. But he thought of the tenderness in the Doctor's touch, the desperation in Koshey's kiss, and he knew. Jack's heart ached for all of them, the Doctor before him and the Doctor he'd known, for Koshey the Deathless and a little for himself.

"No tea, sorry." Jack swallowed. "Unless you want to head over to the mess --"

"No, no," the Doctor waved him off. "Like I said, just give me a few minutes and I'll be fine."

"Koshey - " Jack asked. "Will he be all right?"

"Yes, I suppose so, eventually," the man said with a sigh. "I believe I know what happens next. Unfortunately. Hard to believe he'd go to such lengths, on his own. Do you know - did someone goad him into this?"

"I - I don't know," said Jack. He might. He might know, he thought, he might, but that was between Koshey and him. "No. He just - showed up one day, and started -"

"Well, never mind - it's done now." The Doctor sighed again, and shook his head. He picked up his hat from where it had fallen and began to dust it off. "I'd best be off. Nice job with the crowd control there, by the way - what's your name?"

"Ja- James," said Jack, because after all it wasn't _his_ Doctor. "James, uh, Potter."

"Oh really," said the Doctor, and his eyes twinkled as he reached out to shake Jack's hand. "That's marvellous."

And snatched it back just as quick, after only brushing Jack's fingers with his own. The Doctor's eyes widened and he clutched his hand to his chest, rubbing it unconsciously with the other.

"Good Lord," the Doctor backed away from Jack, one step and then two, not looking away until he nearly tripped over a bench. Jack's mouth hung open, he looked from the Doctor to his outstretched hand and back again, and just _what the -_

"What," the Doctor whispered. "You're wrong. You're all - you're _wrong_. What _are you_?"

Jack pulled his hand back and shoved it in the pocket of his greatcoat. "I don't know," he said desperately, on the verge of panic, because if the _Doctor_ didn't know - "I was really, _really_ hoping you could tell me."

"I'm sorry. I've no idea," the Doctor breathed, a consternated little wrinkle appearing between his eyes. "You shouldn't exist. According to all the laws of - you shouldn't be _possible_."

His eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment, and he muttered, "Of course, he'd fixate on you, and he's always been so obsessed with death, that - "

The Doctor smiled, then, and said "For what it's worth, though, you seem quite nice, as impossible things go."

"Thanks, I guess," Jack said ruefully. At least the Doctor didn't think he was _evil_, just - _wrong_, and it looked as if he'd just have to wait around a while longer, until _his_ showed up. Anyway it made a change from the first time he'd met the Doctor, that was something.

"I do have to get on, though," the Doctor said. He pointed at himself. "You'll give me the mother of all headaches. Good luck with your problem, ah, James, was it?"

"Right," said Jack. "Hey - Doctor!"

The Doctor turned and looked back, untying the tent flap.

"Next time you see Koshey - give him my regards?"

A salute and a smile and the Doctor was gone, running as far and as fast from Jack Harkness as he could possibly get. Just like old times.

Heaving a massive sigh, Jack threw himself down in a pile of straw and wished he were dead.

Then he remembered he was scheduled to do just that in half an hour - and for free.

"God damn it," he muttered. Jack looked around the empty tent, two candles still burning beside the door, a pale echo of the last performance of Koshey the Deathless. The platform was dark, but he could just make out the scorch marks on the wood, and what exactly had the Doctor meant, fixate?

If Koshey'd really thought Jack was the Doctor, or - or working for the Doctor, or - he was iller than any of them knew. Why hadn't he run at Jack's touch? Touching him had only seemed to make Koshey _madder_, Jack remembered, almost the way he'd sounded, up there on stage, dying with the Doctor -

_Shit_, Jack thought. _I have got to get out of this place_.

He'd brought nothing with him, and he took nothing but the earnings in the pocket of his greatcoat. Jack slipped out of town, unnoticed and silent in the night. He hitched a ride with a spice trader come up from the Indies; he and his wife spoke no English, and that suited Jack just fine.

Rift or no rift, he'd had enough of Wales. He could wait a while for the Doctor - _his_ Doctor - in London.

Might even see if he could go a whole year without dying.

And if Jack caught himself, unconsciously tapping out a rhythm against the side of the cart - onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour - he forgot about it at once, and never thought of it again.


End file.
